When should you start making Pesach?
Well that depends what “making Pesach” means to you.
If making Pesach means a deadline for your renovation, then book your designer and kablan Channukah time, and if they’re good, everything will be finished in time for Pesach.
If making Pesach means purchasing new furniture, buying new closets and appliances or updating everything in your house that is broken, then I would start that around Teves, which comes out just around Parshas Shemos. When you start hearing about Yitzias Mitzrayim at the Shabbos table… it’s time to go furniture shopping! The longer you wait, the stores will be swamped with orders and you’ll get less help and attention. If you wait until Adar you may not get your furniture in time, and if you do it’s a miracle which comes with a lot of agmas nefesh.
If making Pesach means going through every cabinet and closet in your house and decluttering and organizing, (which BTW is not a halachic requirement for Pesach at all, but is part of our mesorah for some reason..), then the healthy time to start is about two months before Pesach. Which is around Tu b’Shvat . It’s far enough from Pesach that you’re not interfering with the mitzvah of true Pesach cleaning, but its close enough that whatever you do – can last and stay organized and clean until Pesach.
To organize correctly, in a way that lasts long-term, I recommend joining my online workshop. The ladies who have been through the workshop don’t have to organize for Pesach, they’re done! They can start cleaning in Nissan. Organizing is not for Nissan. It’s for the two months before, when erev Pesach is on the horizon, but not too close to be able to have the yishuv hada’as to organize correctly.
Oh, and if you are purely halachic and just getting rid of chametz, then start Rosh Chodesh Nissan. Ok, if your nervous maybe start even a few days before that, so that you can do it calmly. But starting in Nissan means you’re not shopping for furniture or appliances, you’re not painting, and your not even organizing, you’re just getting rid of chametz!
